Speaker 1: You're probably familiar, especially if you watch the nonprofits, which
Speaker 1: you should, about some of the arguments that take place
Speaker 1: over the banning of books, whether it be because of
Speaker 1: sexually explicit material or some other mature content. But what
Speaker 1: happens when that policy backfires on the Bible? Incest, sexual assault,
Speaker 1: a lot of other really bad stuff happening. Steven is
Speaker 1: here to take us away on this article about this subject.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jimmy. Yeah. Republican lawmakers in Texas can't seem to
Speaker 2: follow the law even when they're the ones writing it.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty three, Texas past House Bill nine hundred,
Speaker 2: banning sexually explicit books from schools. This led Kenyon Independent
Speaker 2: School District to quietly pull the Bible from library shelves,
Speaker 2: likely due to the graphic depiction of violence and sexuality
Speaker 2: within its covers. When this development surfaced in December of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, the bill's sponsor, Republican Representative Jared Patterson,
Speaker 2: was livid. He accused the superintendent of misinterpreting the law,
Speaker 2: dismissed any claims of explicit content in the Bible, and
Speaker 2: demanded its immediate reinstatement. Patterson implied ulterior motives behind the decision,
Speaker 2: but provided no rationale as to why this specific book
Speaker 2: should be immune to the very standards that he helped enact. Now,
Speaker 2: as a result, Republicans' favorite Bronze age sex manual is
Speaker 2: back on shelves for children to read without any explanation
Speaker 2: from why as to why it gets exempt from their
Speaker 2: own law.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This story is from The Friendly Atheist by Hemmett Meta
Speaker 1: on December twenty third, twenty twenty four. Boy, we love
Speaker 1: Hemmett Meta. We love the Friendly Atheist. I think we
Speaker 1: have an article from him on every episode. So thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks for stocking our content with good stuff. And that
Speaker 1: was a great intro. You know, I want to know
Speaker 1: why so in this article the superintendent, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: took the right course of action by standardizing the policy
Speaker 1: to all books. Right, but then they reversed the reversed course.
Speaker 1: Didn't reverse course? And Steven, I want to get your
Speaker 1: take on that. You know, what, what the hell happened?
Speaker 3: I mean, we were doing so good, we were doing
Speaker 3: so good.
Speaker 4: What happened there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Like like anytime you see a career politician pressuring
Speaker 2: a career educator, you know that you are living in
Speaker 2: a time that is devoted to ignorance and controlling the masses,
Speaker 2: like as like the like. A lot of the information
Speaker 2: that has surfaced in this issue was the result of, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this snippet of an email got shared, so then that
Speaker 2: resulted in this part of an email getting shared back
Speaker 2: and forth. So we don't we don't know the full context.
Speaker 2: We don't have the play by play by play, but
Speaker 2: as best as we can tell, you know, I guess
Speaker 2: a parent wanted to know why the Bible wasn't on
Speaker 2: the shelves in their child's library, and that question got
Speaker 2: forwarded to the superintendent. The superintendent said, hey, sorry, like
Speaker 2: you know, this is the new law that was passed
Speaker 2: saying sexually explicit books can't be on ourselves. If you
Speaker 2: don't like it, you know, I'm sorry. This is out
Speaker 2: of my hands. But here's our Republican representative. He's the
Speaker 2: one who passed this bill. He or at least the
Speaker 2: one who sponsored the bill. That's why we're in this,
Speaker 2: this gosh darn situation that we're in. Shucks, But don't worry.
Speaker 2: We've got lots of partner in churches where we can
Speaker 2: supply your kids with Bibles.
Speaker 4: What the fuck.
Speaker 2: And so when the question got brought to the politician
Speaker 2: as to why are you saying that the Bible shouldn't
Speaker 2: be in schools, that's when he went off and said,
Speaker 2: what the fudge are you talking about? Of course the
Speaker 2: Bible needs to be in there, because the Bible is
Speaker 2: protected by these laws, and just did not did not,
Speaker 2: in any way whatsoever address the problem that this book
Speaker 2: is full of all this vile, reprehensible, sexually explicit content.
Speaker 2: Just said it did not exist. It shows that he
Speaker 2: has no idea what exactly is in the Bible. Accused
Speaker 2: the superintendent of not understanding the law and just said, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I did the right thing, and you are the one
Speaker 2: who is acting sus.
Speaker 1: Well, I read the law, and I read the letter
Speaker 1: from from Jared Patterson, and you know, Patterson doesn't even
Speaker 1: know the law. I mean, let's not forget. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: doesn't know what's in the Bible to be so curious
Speaker 1: as to why I got removed. But the law doesn't
Speaker 1: even say that the Bible must be in uh must
Speaker 1: be in the library at the school. It actually says
Speaker 1: religious literature. And if you're going to remove sexually explicit
Speaker 1: religious literature, you can do that and still or excuse me,
Speaker 1: if you're going to take snippets out of the literature,
Speaker 1: you can still have the literature in the book or
Speaker 1: in the library and not have those explicit. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could comply with the law and with people's faith.
Speaker 2: And that's partly what they did too, Like he pointed
Speaker 2: out the fact that, yeah, we don't have the Bible
Speaker 2: as a whole on the shelves, but we still have
Speaker 2: this book, this book, this book, this book in this book.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I think that the superintendent completely folded.
Speaker 1: One parent wrote a letter, the Patterson flipped out, probably
Speaker 1: because he wants to look good to his constituents, and
Speaker 1: then the the superintendent completely folded. Helen, Who are you
Speaker 1: more aghast at Jared Patterson or the superintendent who completely
Speaker 1: reverse course when we were doing so good?
Speaker 4: Oh definitely the superintendent. Okay, definitely, because Patterson's doing like
Speaker 4: he he's a religious weirdo and he wants a super
Speaker 4: special book, and his super special book is super important him.
Speaker 4: Anythings everybody should read and believe in his super special book.
Speaker 4: So fine, and so I'm not surprised at this. I'm
Speaker 4: more angry at the superintendent because they were following the law.
Speaker 4: They were like, okay, like do you ban these books?
Speaker 4: You ban sexually explicit content. The Bible has sexually explicit content.
Speaker 4: Is there's sexual there's sexual assault, there's insists like you know,
Speaker 4: we can go on and on. So when you like,
Speaker 4: I don't want my kids to read I wouldn't want like,
Speaker 4: you know, junior high kids reading that, you know, and
Speaker 4: without some contexts you know, included. But again they were
Speaker 4: like okay, you know what. No, And then with a
Speaker 4: little bit of pressure and threatened, and that's with legal action.
Speaker 4: He was like, yeah, I'm going to reverse course. And
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna say this super this super book, the
Speaker 4: super Special book, because Patterson's like his panties in a twist,
Speaker 4: has to remain on the shelf. And I hate this
Speaker 4: because I hate hypocrisy. It drives me crazy, and like
Speaker 4: and and the thing that drives me even more crazy,
Speaker 4: like Lord forbid, pun intended that they read like things
Speaker 4: like to Kill a Mockingbird. You know, no I read
Speaker 4: that book. Had to read the Super Special, like the
Speaker 4: Super Special book that's full of all these horrible things.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not even a good Bronze age sex manual.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there were way better bronze age sex man
Speaker 4: a littles that were written than the Bible, ready, damn sure.
Speaker 4: So yeah, not not a fan of the superintendent because
Speaker 4: I hate hypocrisy and he was doing what he was
Speaker 4: told to do and then he cowtailed, and that just
Speaker 4: it's gross and that's that's that's how I feel.
Speaker 2: In two he was named Superintendent of the Year just so.
Speaker 1: While he probably wanted to keep that status by not
Speaker 1: angering some of the more Christian and right leaning UH
Speaker 1: parents and school board members and members of the community
Speaker 1: in general, because this is Texas after all, you know, Tracy,
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your take the the back and
Speaker 1: forth between.
Speaker 3: Uh the governor.
Speaker 1: It was governor, right, am?
Speaker 2: I am?
Speaker 3: I right about that?
Speaker 1: No, Patterson, Who the hell is Patterson.
Speaker 4: He's a he's a state representative.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, right? So the back and forth between Patterson
Speaker 1: and the superintendent. Is Patterson playing dumb about his book
Speaker 1: or is there you know something else that's going on
Speaker 1: about here?
Speaker 3: So Patterson, Sorry, I've lost track of who Patterson was.
Speaker 3: So Patterson Patterson, I see, I see, Yeah, he's the
Speaker 3: one who wrote the letter. I had his letter pulled
Speaker 3: up and I forgot who he was. So I don't
Speaker 3: think that Jared Patterson is playing anything. I think he
Speaker 3: genuinely doesn't know because it's easy. Many people will follow
Speaker 3: the faith and not read their text. So it's really
Speaker 3: easy to not know about Lot and his daughters because
Speaker 3: they don't bring that up very much, you know. I
Speaker 3: I think that it's just a case of special pleading
Speaker 3: that they want to get their thing in. It doesn't
Speaker 3: matter by what method, and they don't want things that
Speaker 3: they disapprove of to go in, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: by what method they want. It's just this constant thing
Speaker 3: of I want my way, and my way is the
Speaker 3: way it's going to happen, and we're not going to
Speaker 3: do anything other than exactly the way I want it
Speaker 3: to happen. If I were to go approach the world
Speaker 3: that way, I would never get my way. Ever, I
Speaker 3: would never have any friends.
Speaker 1: You should run to the president.
Speaker 3: You need to be able to compromise at a certain
Speaker 3: level here, like To Kill a Mockingbird. I read that book. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it has a few disturbing passages in it, a few
Speaker 3: disturbing words, but it's not an unpalatable book. The scene
Speaker 3: with Lot and his daughters is thoroughly unpa palatable to me.
Speaker 3: So clearly it's a matter of opinion, and their opinion
Speaker 3: is that they're fine reading about Lot and his daughters,
Speaker 3: but reading about Antebellum South is just too much. And
Speaker 3: I don't really they seem just to be babies and
Speaker 3: to be throwing their hands up in the air, and like,
Speaker 3: I don't like these books, but my favorite book is
Speaker 3: just like them. It's just a classic case of whining
Speaker 3: and poor me.
Speaker 1: So, you know, this reminds me of the article that
Speaker 1: we discussed on Monday, when we talked about you know,
Speaker 1: people wanting what they want and they don't care who
Speaker 1: it impacts, right, you know, the system is only good
Speaker 1: when the system operates that way for them, and I
Speaker 1: think that that is what we're seeing. You know, we
Speaker 1: have a legislator who supported this policy, and when the
Speaker 1: policy turned around to bite him in the ass, you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of just irately pointed the finger at the
Speaker 1: intent superintendent who is just following the rules, and then
Speaker 1: the superintendent due to the same political pressures by his community,
Speaker 1: because let's face it, Pattison wants to get re elected,
Speaker 1: so he's got to be a champion of the religious right.
Speaker 2: And you know what's his name.
Speaker 1: The superintendent doesn't want to make any waves, so he
Speaker 1: just falls right in line. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: that this is a dangerous mixing of state and education, right.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the church should be anywhere near
Speaker 1: our education or our public school system. And for this reason,
Speaker 1: because now you know, there's there's a way of the
Speaker 1: church kind of infecting the political system.
Speaker 2: You know, Steven, what are.
Speaker 1: Your thoughts on what seems to be a career politician
Speaker 1: putting his own political pressure onto the school system.
Speaker 2: Like it's it bothers me. It disgusts me, because like
Speaker 2: it's one thing to say, well, the guy's got to
Speaker 2: get elected, he's got to look after himself, right, But
Speaker 2: when you're in that position, and especially like if this
Speaker 2: is something that just comes up every time that I
Speaker 2: get the honor of being on this show, is when
Speaker 2: it affects children. Nothing hurts me more than when people
Speaker 2: like this put their own agendas above the well being
Speaker 2: of children. And if you are saying, well, I got
Speaker 2: to look after I got to get reelected, so I
Speaker 2: need to please this, uh, this this portion of the
Speaker 2: population and in order to please them, I need to
Speaker 2: screw over these children metaphorically speaking like that, Just that
Speaker 2: just hits me hard, because if we are not taking
Speaker 2: care of our children, if we are not looking after
Speaker 2: their best interest, what is going to become of this world?
Speaker 2: We don't we don't have unlimited time here, like they
Speaker 2: know that, But the difference is that we're trying to
Speaker 2: protect our time here and our children are our most vulnerable,
Speaker 2: most valuable resource, and for us to put political agendas
Speaker 2: ahead of their well being, their understanding of the world,
Speaker 2: it is just the most despicable, dare I say evil
Speaker 2: kind of choice that someone can be making, and it
Speaker 2: just itles me.
Speaker 1: I don't think evil is an inappropriate term, because I
Speaker 1: think when push comes to show of a lot of
Speaker 1: pol Titians will cling to the the power, the drug
Speaker 1: of power, by any means necessary, and it's almost like
Speaker 1: they can't even help themselves. And this may very well
Speaker 1: be a case like that, especially when you see the
Speaker 1: power dynamics of the religious right in this country now.
Speaker 1: But I do digress a little bit. I wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of get Helen's take, because you know, Helen, we
Speaker 1: talked about the explicit nature of Latin's Daughters for example,
Speaker 1: and the many other things that are in this book.
Speaker 1: You have, I know, a lot of opinions on sexuality.
Speaker 1: For all of our viewers who aren't aware, you can
Speaker 1: go back and check out episodes of Secular Sexuality. You'll
Speaker 1: find Helen on there. Helen, you have mentioned before that
Speaker 1: you know, you came out as queer earlier in your life.
Speaker 1: You've got some opinions on sexuality. So what makes something
Speaker 1: sexually explicit?
Speaker 4: So the way I'm like at is that things that
Speaker 4: are sexually explicit, so we as adults understand the complexities
Speaker 4: and the nuances of human sexuality. Children do not. Okay,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't mean you can't teach children about sex.
Speaker 4: You can expose them to Hey, two men. You know,
Speaker 4: sometimes you know, women and men like each other, and
Speaker 4: sometimes you know, people have different the same gender like
Speaker 4: each other and they fall in love. Like, this isn't
Speaker 4: sexually explicit. This is just you know, people being in relationships.
Speaker 4: And guess what that happens all the time. So there's
Speaker 4: a we know what the line is. You know, we
Speaker 4: understand how through science, everybody how psychologically you know, we
Speaker 4: developed from childhood development, childhood psychology into pre prebeussens through puberty,
Speaker 4: you know, adolescents into adulthood. We know the track record
Speaker 4: of that. And teaching appropriate educational you know, with science
Speaker 4: backed information about sexuality, about gender, sexual preference, consent would
Speaker 4: be really great teach you know, how to keep how
Speaker 4: do you keep yourself to even teaching kids like bodily autonomy,
Speaker 4: like you can't just go up and like, you know,
Speaker 4: touch somebody. You need to ask first and you get
Speaker 4: to negotiate how there was you teach that to like
Speaker 4: a a five year old, like there has to be
Speaker 4: that available. And as a queer person, I know what
Speaker 4: like because of my own understanding, you know, development and
Speaker 4: different understanding of these things. When when you live in
Speaker 4: a very her normative world and you're seen as the
Speaker 4: deviant because your sexuality is not towing a certain line,
Speaker 4: you you kind of question, especially when you start coming
Speaker 4: out and you're developing your sexuality, You go, am I
Speaker 4: the dB in, Am I doing something wrong? But then
Speaker 4: when you realize you really, no, I'm not sexually exploiting children.
Speaker 4: I'm not exposing children to pornography. I am not doing
Speaker 4: a sort of grooming or anything like that. I'm just
Speaker 4: existing as a queer person in the world. That's a difference.
Speaker 4: But the thing is, though, is that people that haven't
Speaker 4: had this education. Again we're talking about lack of education
Speaker 4: of normal development of sexuality. They one think that it's
Speaker 4: not so much the Bible, it is queerness. It is people,
Speaker 4: you know, margin you know, people of color, people that
Speaker 4: don't fit says white Hero Anglo Saxon. Bullshit. You know,
Speaker 4: that's that is the message. It hasn't because if you
Speaker 4: really wanted to say that sexually explicit materials should not
Speaker 4: be involved in schools, then you would be in the
Speaker 4: Bible because you would read it and go, oh my god,
Speaker 4: like like a ten year old cannot read this, Like
Speaker 4: why should a ten year old read about intests? Like kids,
Speaker 4: they're gonna ask questions, and it's because they don't. They one,
Speaker 4: they haven't read their own book, you know, yeah, a
Speaker 4: lot of times they haven't. They don't know those stories
Speaker 4: are in there.
Speaker 3: I know, And you know what I think.
Speaker 1: I feel like it makes more sense for the representative
Speaker 1: Patterson to support or for these parents, these fundamentalist Christian
Speaker 1: parents out there that have a problem with this, It
Speaker 1: almost makes more sense for them to support the parts
Speaker 1: that are removed, and to have the abbreviated Bible. You
Speaker 1: know that seemed in the past to work for Christianity. Again,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't expect them to know that because they don't
Speaker 1: know anything about their religion or its history of where
Speaker 1: it comes from. So I think that, you know, I
Speaker 1: really had a problem in this article because the representative
Speaker 1: only received one complaint and then turned around and used
Speaker 1: the superintendent of open hostility. And I really don't respect
Speaker 1: the way that the superintendent responded.
Speaker 2: Tracy.
Speaker 1: I want to get your take on how should the
Speaker 1: superintendent have responded. What would have been your response had
Speaker 1: you been in this position.
Speaker 3: So what I'm going to tell you, Jimmy, is concerning
Speaker 3: what mister Patterson said. If you look up Chapter twenty eight,
Speaker 3: Section twenty eight point h two of the Texas Education Code,
Speaker 3: it does not require that the Bible be there. It
Speaker 3: requires that the Bible be taught about. It has not
Speaker 3: required that the children can be given access to it.
Speaker 3: I don't see where he's getting that there's an exemption
Speaker 3: for the Bible to be allowed to be given to
Speaker 3: these children. I don't I haven't read the house built
Speaker 3: nine hundred in its entirety. But if it says what
Speaker 3: I've been led to believe, it says sexually explicit material
Speaker 3: and violence and things of this nature, which we can
Speaker 3: go in to defining those all you want, but it
Speaker 3: seems pretty open and shut. The Bible in its entirety
Speaker 3: should not be allowed. Now, the Bible, not everybody knows this.
Speaker 3: This mister Patterson may not know it. The Bible is
Speaker 3: not one book. The Bible is an anthology of books.
Speaker 3: So if you want to just you know, toss in
Speaker 3: Exodus or toss out whatever, just put in or just
Speaker 3: go through with a black sharpie if you have to
Speaker 3: redact to what you got to do. If you're really
Speaker 3: that desperate to get as much content as you can
Speaker 3: in there, go in with a sharpie. But if you're
Speaker 3: not gonna do any of the leg work on redacting it,
Speaker 3: it's not the super attendant's job. Because one he puts
Speaker 3: in his letter that a parent had contacted him. First
Speaker 3: of all, that's a great that's a great representative. Sorry,
Speaker 3: it's not this representative's job to go complain to the superintendent.
Speaker 3: But it really seems to me.
Speaker 5: That it's just it's a special pleading case because this
Speaker 5: book definitely is knocked out by the HP nine hundred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And and you know, I think that this
Speaker 1: article just goes to show why government and religion don't mix. Okay,
Speaker 1: the representative should stay out of the the public schools
Speaker 1: operations and stop trying to put religion where it doesn't belong.
Speaker 1: And you know that is something that we believe on
Speaker 1: the ACA is incredibly important to maintaining you know, free
Speaker 1: thought and critical thinking